Whitstable, Kent

Only just over an hour from home so before landing at our holiday destination we nip to the coast and visit Whitstable.

We make the Castle our first stop on a grey, drizzly and overcast day  

The earliest mention of this site in the history books is in 1588

when a copperas works was founded on this site below where the castle now stands. Copperas was for a time a sought-after mineral extract used to fix dyes in cloth and the licence to mine it was given by Queen Elizabeth I.

Throughout the centuries the castle was lived in by various business and/or political folk until 1935 when Whitstable District Council bought it.

It is now a community facility hosting weddings and business meetings, conferences and classes etc. 

The Victorian Tearooms where we had lunch

before walking along the top of the cliffs

with our binoculars we could just about see our home county of Essex on the other side of the Thames estuary

Can be seen easily on a clear day

As we walk down Tower Hill into the town we pass this pretty house and garden before entering the town and coming to 

and yes one has to squeeze in their gut and walk sideways

The Town of Whitstable grew from the main road to Canterbury, now known  as the  high street, and the alley ways developed as local residents  needed greater access to the sea. The multitude of alleys also served  as convenient escape routes for smugglers, as Whitstable was, like most  Kentish coastal towns, awash with the  illegal trade in tobacco and spirits,  as well as people during the Napoleonic wars. Once known as Granny Bell's Alley, due to the fact that a grandmother  of sixteen children lived there, the reason for its present title quickly  becomes clear as you try to pass through it! The walls on each side  loom high and dark as the alley bottle-knecks at the Island Wall end.  According to history, the alley way may also have got its name from  a game local boys once played with a potentially very unamused  overweight policeman who was unable to pursue them through this  confined space.

A pretty cottage and garden as we walk along to the see front

where we see one of the old Thames barges returning with some sight see-ers

Time to make our way to Rifleman Cottage where there will be tea and cakes waiting for us